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Comment by BadassFractal | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious to see what's going to happen when an employee, secretly part of a neurodiversity hiring program, says something that makes someone uncomfortable and that gets reported to HR.

Will someone's comfort levels take precedence over the desire to employ someone with difficulty with social cues?

Or will we visibly "tag" employees who are neurodiversity hires so that you know that if they somehow offend you, that might be because they're on a different wavelength compared to you, so you should give them a pass? Do neurodiversity hires get to keep their status secret, or will the company need to disclose it?

On one hand, you don't want to fire them, that will look terrible for the company, but on the other hand, you don't want people to feel uncomfortable either, which creates legal vulnerabilities down the line. Curious how that conundrum gets solved.

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Imagine someone with an obvious physical disability. Like being in a wheelchair. They can't really hide that, and we (hopefully) make accommodations for them. People are generally pretty great if you know the accommodations necessary. And if they hit you with their wheelchair by accident, you probably will feel bad for getting in their way instead of reporting them to HR for workplace violence.

So I imagine if you have a hidden disability, if you need accommodation, it's in your best interest for people to know that, so they can accommodate you. I can understand hiding it in the outside world because you never know how people will react, but at the workplace, people will figure it out, and if they treat you poorly because of it, then they get the boot, so it's probably a win all around to make it known.

It's a little more nuanced than that, and it does depend on the condition in question. Autism in SV has a reasonably benign reputation, but other mental "abnormalities" not so much.

An SO of many years had bipolar disorder, and it helped me get a deep appreciation for the amount of game theory that goes into disclosing one's condition to others, especially at work. Most of the "reaction" from people doesn't have to be explicit, nobody is going to call you "the crazy girl" to your face at work.

BUT, given the reputation and stigma that something like bipolar disorder has, you're never sure how exactly you're implicitly (as in, implicit bias) being treated differently by your peers.

Did your company pass on giving you a certain role because they're not sure you can handle the pressure with your condition? Are peers and managers looking at your behavior through the lens of someone who is not in control of their mental states? How many years will it take for you to establish a reputation of someone who's reliable and fight against the natural inclination of those around you to distrust your equanimity? Are people going to interpret your shortcomings through the lens of "she must be off her meds"? Will someone be able to use your condition as leverage over you in a competitive environment and how do you prove discrimination against you in that case?

> So I imagine if you have a hidden disability, if you need accommodation, it's in your best interest for people to know that, so they can accommodate you.

In my experience, even if it is made known, people are less forgiving of non-visible disabilities and some that interact with the disabled individual less frequently may even forget that it exists. One may have to actively "display" their disability, even if they'd rather appear to be as normal as possible.

Yeah, there's definitely less 'leeway'/sympathy given to those whose disabilities are invisible/mostly invisible.

Honestly, I'd say it's probably an uncanny valley effect of sorts (as depressing as that sounds) where those who look 'normal' but don't act it put people on edge and arouse suspicion.

Jerk and someone with asperger is not the same. Some jerks do like to pretend the reason they just can't stop insulting others is asperger, especially on discussion forums. It is not same as the one with asperger.

First, you can actually communicate with people who have asperger and tell them that this or that thing is insulting. They are able to follow the rules typically even is they don't understand them. They also won't be charming toward boss and manipulative toward peer amd then offending junior minority dude.

People with asperger take in feedback, just like neurotypical take in feedback, unlike jerks who refuse to accept being told they have done something wrong. You actually say to someone with asperger that his behavior is offending in specific way and you can expect him to follow. You can't expect him to know unspeaken or subtle rules.

People with asperger are uncomfortable to all around in similar way and you see that in interactions that are not racist sexist or whatever jokes. If someones offending behavior shows up only in such things and only towards weaker people, then it is not asperger.

Tbh it seems like a pretty big jerk move to think that just because you give someone feedback, they should do what you say or otherwise they're jerks.

Aspies are often told they have done something wrong, only to find that others can get away with doing the same thing. This naturally leads to trying to discover the real rules instead of the ones people try to make others obey. That's where the friction really occurs.

It's not that it's impossible to understand, it's that is impossible to take seriously once you see through it. And the insistence on superficial token demonstrations of decency, instead of actually decent application of principle, makes it tedious af.

At minimum one is expected to listen to that feedback and think about it. And yes I do my best to respect boundaries of other people. Parent poster started with level of offense that would be ground for firing. No, other people don't have duty to let others insult them and are entitled to set boundries. That includes people with asperger (who are more likely to be victims here).

You absolutely can communicate about these issues with someone with asperger. Yes, highly charizmatic people can often skate rules due to knowing when and where to do it and making friends.

That does not make communication with aspies impossible as parent implies. Nor it creates some kind of unsolvable concordrums where one would be expected to take no action if aspie is in interaction vs firing if it I somebody else.

It's really hard to expect anyone to be good at complying with rules they do not understand, unfortunately.

(Even if they're fully willing, the required exactitude for a rule to be followed by people who don't understand it is orders of magnitude greater and is seldom achieved by any rule except through painful and time consuming iteration)

The ways in which people who had asperger were uncomfortable really had nothing to do with things one gets fired for through HR.

They were treated unfairly due to not kissing right asses etc on occasion. But there we are talking about subtle issues, not the firing offences which tends to be easy to be on safe side of.

> says something that makes someone uncomfortable and that gets reported to HR

If it's a one-off, not part of a pattern of behaviour, and the person is willing to apologise, they can usually be forgiven.

(Doubling down on "I'm right and they were wrong to be offended", on the other hand, is a terrible idea)

If you want a visible physical disability analogy, imagine that someone with a wheelchair runs over someone else's foot.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise you were there" = everyone's friends again

"I'm sorry, you shouldn't have been standing there" = probably OK in the long run but unpopular

"You should have got out of my way" = unacceptable response.

"> says something that makes someone uncomfortable and that gets reported to HR

"If it's a one-off, not part of a pattern of behaviour, and the person is willing to apologise, they can usually be forgiven.

"(Doubling down on "I'm right and they were wrong to be offended", on the other hand, is a terrible idea)

This is true in almost any situation.

Yeah, this is a good point.

Then again, I worry that the current social/political climate isn't a good one for people on the autistic spectrum (or neurodiversity) in general.

Someone in this situation would already potentially be a whole lot of trouble (especially if the offendee goes on the internet with the complaints), neurodiversity hiring program or not.

The assumption here - "autistic people are arseholes" - is probably untrue, and is a perception caused by the number of arseholes who self-diagnose but who wouldn't get an actual dx, and who then use that as an excuse to continue to behave like arseholes.

I know a lot of autistic people, and a few of them are arseholes, but they are entirely ordinary arseholes. Their arseholery is very much the same as the arseholery from NT people, which makes me think it's not the autism.

I don't think that's the assumption. The point I was making is that that even for non-neurodiverse people it's exceptionally difficult to communicate in a way that never leads to someone taking offense or being made feel uncomfortable when working with people from different backgrounds, cultures and experiences, all under high stakes conditions.

We all constantly put feet in our mouths despite our best intentions (see the whole concept of micro aggressions) and being able to navigate subtle social situations when that inevitably happens is difficult for everybody. Much more so for someone who is worse at reading nonverbal cues and struggling with anticipating "how will this make them feel?"

There is plenty of room for offense and misinterpretation between the most benign accidental faux pas and giant asshole moves, and that's where I suspect most of the rope to hang yourself with lies.

There's a quote from He Who Shall Not Be Named here that is an interesting datapoint from a recent event, echoing my point: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/11/19/043243 . I suspect he wasn't a giant asshole, but maybe others would argue otherwise.

In reality I don't expect neurodiverse individuals to end up as cases on HR's desks: I would be shocked to see harassment anywhere near the top of the list of situations that might arise from this push for inclusion. Awkward situations in intra-team interpersonal dynamics? Sure. But real harassment, not likely.

ASD isn't anything new, you're comments act like this is something we haven't ever had to face before. Turns out a lot of developers have some form of ASD, it's very common in the industry. Odds are you already have someone on your team on the spectrum.

I think OP has a valid point. How do we differentiate the discourageable bad behavior from someone's disabilities? Trying to draw a line there is almost an exercise in futility. I would not want to be the HR person that has to handle a situation like that.

That's exactly it. As of today, if someone says something "inappropriate" to another employee, they either get a warning or get booted right away depending on the severity. Nobody's digging into whether this person is actually on the spectrum, unless they had given clear signs in the past to justify it. You conform, or you're out.

However, once the company is making an explicit effort to be welcoming and inclusive to employees with a neurodiverse background, what do you choose to prioritize in that kind of stallmate?

I don’t think it’s anything to lose sleep over. Just assume someone with ASD can apologize, the same as anyone else who says something stupid. And that they feel bad when embarrassing things slip out.

I’ve worked with a lot of people with ASD over the years, it’s never caused any serious problems. You have worked with them too; once you know what to look for you see them all over tech.

Imagine employing the late Terry A. Davis and then dealing with his comments on race. Still think it's something normal and easy to deal with?

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